It's good to test a cliché with the litmus paper of experience. Here the cliché is that Jeffrey Archer writes terrible novels. Harry Clifton is a poor boy who, by dint of a beautiful voice, wins a place at a posh school, but the path to great fortune is strewn with obstacles  obstacles overcome with about as much tension as old knicker elastic. Revisiting the same events from the viewpoint of different characters makes for a repetitive plot, while its suffocatingly neat coincidences deprive the book of air. Why does there have to be a merry old sage who knows everything and everyone? He is like an avatar of the novelist himself. What is the appeal for Archer's legions of fans? His books really are Enid Blyton for grown-ups, and in this book, set mostly in the 1930s, the frequent references to prices in pennies make it seem even more of a pocket-money world. Archer's writing has a forensic bent, and as the characters take turns to present their version of events they often sound as if they're in the dock. In the case of Archer himself, I find him guilty as charged: this is a truly terrible novel.